Monday, May 6, 2013

The strange, conspiracy-filled case of ‘Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg’

Imagine if, in the span of a month, the FBI investigated Mark
Zuckerberg for a hit-and-run, investors launched a hostile takeover of
Facebook and Zuckerberg disappeared under vague circumstances.

It sounds crazy, but that’s more or less the situation playing out in
Russia right now, where Pavel Durov, the founder of VK — known as
“Russia’s Facebook,” it’s Europe’s largest social network — has been in
hiding since security forces fingered him for a hit-and-run and a
businessman with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin bought out
half the company.

Skeptical reports in Der Spiegel, Britain’s Guardian and the Russian-language business journals AIN and Hopes & Fears
speculate that the charges might just be the Kremlin’s latest attempt
to clamp down on Russia’s upstart social network, which has become a
platform for dissent. According to police, Durov has committed a crime
he needs to answer for.

To understand the drama, you need to know a little bit about VK and its history in Russia. The six-year-old site has 46 million active daily users, making it less than a tenth the size
of Facebook, which after all is global in reach — but popular enough in
Russia and the former Soviet republics to more or less keep Facebook
out.